Has your employer ever mockingly asked you, “Are you blind?” when you could not see something that was obvious to him or her. And now you are having vision problems or eye injury, caused or aggravated by your job, and your employer will have to pay out workers compensation benefits. Oh, the irony!
Eye injuries, vision loss, blindness, and other vision problems related to work are not unheard of, especially given that most of us have to stare at computer monitors for hours, which puts a tremendous amount of strain on our eyes.
But does California’s workers compensation program actually make it possible to seek workers comp benefits for work-related eye injuries and vision problems? “Regardless of whether your eye injury, vision loss, or blindness is the result of a single event at work or something that has developed over a prolonged period of time, you may be entitled to receive workers comp benefits as long as you can prove that your eye condition is related to work,” says our workers comp attorney in Los Angeles, CA at Law Offices of Kropach & Kropach.
You may run into a myriad of obstacles when trying to obtain workers comp benefits for your eye injury or vision problem because employers and workers comp insurance adjusters are no strangers to denying or minimizing claims related to vision problems.
For example, one of the most common tactics employed by workers comp insurance adjuster is asserting that your eye injury or disorder was not caused by activities on the job or that you acted negligently or recklessly at work, which resulted in your eye injury or vision loss. Another common tactic employed by insurance companies is asserting that your vision loss or disorder was caused by a pre-existing injury or disease, heredity, or another cause that has no relation to work activities.
More often than not, only an experienced workers compensation lawyer in Los Angeles or elsewhere in California can help you counter unreasonable allegations made by the insurance adjuster or employer in an attempt to deny or minimize your claim.
Before filing a workers comp claim in California, is it paramount that you establish the cause of your eye injury, vision problem, or blindness? While it may seem that eye injury can only occur at construction sites or in industrial and manufacturing workplaces, this is not entirely true. In reality, many workers sustain eye injuries, lose vision, or even become blind in office and retail settings.
Let’s review some of the most common causes of eye injuries and vision disorders in the workplace:
The vast majority of vision problems are developed over time as opposed to a single event or accident in the workplace. Repeated eye strain from long hours of staring at a computer monitor can result in vision disorders over time, yet it is difficult to prove that this type of disorder was caused by work activities unless you are represented by a Los Angeles workers compensation attorney.
Schedule a free consultation with our lawyers from the Law Offices of Kropach & Kropach. Call at 818-609-7005 to find out about your options on obtaining workers comp benefits for your eye injury, illness, disorder, or blindness.
